Parry: A night on the tiles benefits classical Chinese garden

GOING THE EXTRA TILE: The weather was perfect Thursday when Lauren Chang and Judy Rendek co-chaired a benefit for community and educational programs at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden of which they are second-year trustees. Attendees strolled through the structures and Ming-style garden built in 1985-86 by master craftsmen from Suzhou, China. Architect Joe Wai and landscape architect Don Vaughan had spent a decade urging three levels of government and private benefactors to fund the $6.1-million project involving traditional Chinese building methods and materials.

One aspect of the latter is problematic today. Much of the roof was replaced in 2000, and 120,000 tiles must be replaced again, said garden executive director Kathy Gibler. Identical-appearing but more durable tiles, along with a more sustainable attachment system, are available from New York. That may upset traditionalists, not to mention Gibler, who was raised in Chicago.

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EIGHT BALLS ROLLING: Anybody can juggle that many in the air, of course. Still, it was a treat when circus artist Quinn Beasley rolled eight glass ones around his hands and up and down his arms, even dropping the odd one to land undamaged on the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden’s stone pathway. We need wine glass like that.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING NATALIE: We saw Natalie Davidson last in 2006 as one of the last-ever debutantes presented, along with sister Nicole, at the Garrison Military Ball. Thursday, having traded that white gown for a UBC English literature graduate’s black one, she was at Granville Street’s Caprice Club, fronting a Blueprint Events fundraiser titled I Love Boobies. The six-hour event aided the Keep A Breast Foundation’s efforts to inform young women about breast-cancer prevention, detection and support, thereby reducing or eliminating risks their mothers faced.

Although varsity studies made her a devotee of Oscar Wilde, Davidson’s determination regarding breast cancer might make her quibble with that Irish playwright-poet’s saying: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”

HANGING IN: Prolific painter Tiko Kerr might have succumbed to HIV/AIDS in 2006. But Health Canada withdrew its ban on two experimental antiretroviral drugs, and he rocketed back to life, his ailment soon “undetectable.” Today, you can’t just drop in on Kerr’s tribute to late architect Arthur Erickson, because the 15 canvasses hang in the B.C. Law Courts’ closed-to-the-public Barristers’ Lounge. But Vancouver Art Gallery rental sales manager Donna Partridge (604-662-4746) will have you escorted there to see them, just as sheriff’s officers do for the complex’s less-willing visitors.

Meanwhile, more paintings in Tamara J. Lee’s Entropy-series paintings are on the wall at the False Creek Surgical Centre. You’re welcome to take a boo, and even more so to stay for a vasectomy, bariatric procedure, nose job, breast implants, etc.

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YOUNGER OLDSTER: West Vancouver, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, would be 111 had it not split from the District of North Vancouver in 1912, as the City of North Vancouver had five years earlier.

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IN A NAME: Olympic silver medal kayaker Adam van Koeverden must be distantly related to a chap who performed well in our local waters. Eighteenth-century immigrants to England from the Dutch village of Koeverden anglicized their family name and had a son, Captain George Vancouver, who surveyed the Pacific Northwest coast and had his moniker catch on hereabouts.

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PERFORMANCE ART: South Granville art gallerist Monte Clark’s 20 years in business began with six lively ones on Carrall Street. During a 1993 opening, a chap rushed in, grabbed a large painting and tried to sell it in nearby pubs. Police arrested him and returned the work that evening. Not hard to identify, the Gideon Flitt canvas had a naked, red-headed woman reclining on green silk alongside a papaya, a toaster and a fox with a rose in its mouth.

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STREETS OF DREAMS: If only Google Street View showed ways and byways as they were when we were children in them.

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HOOKED: The 62.5-pound salmon Rick Grange took on a six-pound-test line (eight-pound today) set an International Game Fishing Association record in 1987. Langara Island’s West Coast Fishing Club, which Grange and business partner Brian Legge soon acquired, landed another big one — charitywise — by hosting the first Fishing For Kids tournament in 2006. This year’s Aug. 26-29 running may raise $1 million for the Canucks Autism Network, and the overall total to $4 million. That from 42 folk who pay $12,500 each to compete, then assign their winnings — $275,000 last year — to the charity. The Canadian Tenors will sing them on their way from the Hotel Georgia Aug. 25.

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SETTING IT STRAIGHT: While Main Street’s Bodacious Lifestyles womenswear store closed last year, as reported Thursday, co-founder Lorna Ketler continues in business (www.bodacious.ca) in Gibsons.

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DOWN PARRYSCOPE: A recent travel headline read: “Transatlantic cruises offering more bang for the buck.” Not more than when the Costa Concordia cruised beside the Mediterranean’s Isola del Giglio, let’s guess.

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